2025

VAMOS TODXS: HISTÓRIA DO TEATRO DE AMADORES – ENCONTRO, CONVERSAS, ARQUIVOS, EXPOSIÇÃO

VAMOS TODXS [let’s all go], a call to the community to attend the theatre events that take place in Santarém, was an expression commonly used by Carlos Alberto Oliveira, an artist from Santarém, and here it serves as a motto for a meeting between people who, like him, made theatre during the transition from dictatorship to democracy, embodying the revolution itself and thus marking the following generations.
In a day of reflection on amateur and semi-professional theatre in the 70s and 80s, stories from Santarém and different – and decentralised – parts of the country are brought together, told by those involved, to revisit the ways in which theatre played a part in building democracy in Portugal. It is some of these stories that ARQUIVO CHONA tells, a collection of documents that will be presented on this day, and with which more than half a century of the artist’s and theatre’s activity in the municipality of Santarém will be traversed.

PROGRAM
29 March (saturday), from 10:30am to 10:30pm

SÁ DA BANDEIRA THEATRE

10:30 am RECEPTION AND WELCOME

11 am TALK – ‘I ALSO STARTED OUT AS AN AMATEUR’
Around a long table, open to all, figures from Santarém’s amateur theatre discuss, in retrospect, the journey of artists, groups and the city’s artistic scene from the 1960s to today, in parallel with similar stories from other parts of the country, told by those who lived them.

1 pm LUNCH

2 pm TOUR – THEATRE PLACES IN SANTARÉM
Guided tour of the city’s historic centre, stopping off at some of the places where theatre was performed during the second half of the 20th century.

BERNARDO SANTARENO READING ROOM

3 pm PRESENTATION – ART, ACTIVISM AND EXPERIMENTALISM IN THE 70s AND 80s
A guided tour of the exhibition ‘Ruptura em Cena: Arte, Activismo e Experimentalismo nos Anos 70 e 80’ [Rupture on Stage: Art, Activism and Experimentalism in the 1970s and 1980s] at the Bernardo Santareno Reading Room throughout March, by Mário Moutinho, actor, author and curator, with Luísa Marinho. The book ‘O Teatro Semiprofissional no Porto. Arte, activismo e experimentalismo nos anos 70 e 80’ [Semi-professional Theatre at Porto. Art, activism and experimentalism in the 70s and 80s], written by both in the same context, will also be presented.

SÁ DA BANDEIRA THEATRE

4:30 pm PRESENTATION – FOR A HISTORY OF AMATEUR THEATRE
António Gomes Marques, former director of the Portuguese Amateur Theatre Association, shares some of the stories that marked the project of an amateur theatre organisation at national level.

5:30 pm COFFEE-BREAK

6 pm TALK – THEATRE, BEYOND THE PROFESSIONAL AND THE AMATEUR
Bringing together a group of agents who participated, through theatre, in the cultural decentralisation after 25 April 1974, this conversation discusses the ways of organising, financing and making theatre happen in the country, in a democracy.

7:30 pm DINNER

9 pm PRESENTATION – ARQUIVO CHONA
Carlos Manuel Oliveira presents the ARQUIVO CHONA [CHONA ARCHIVE], a repository that gives an account of ongoing research, coordinated by him, invested in collecting and organising primary sources, relating the collection left by Carlos Alberto Oliveira (Chona) with others that give an account of theatre in the municipality of Santarém during the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century.

EXHIBITION “RUPTURA EM CENA: ARTE, ACTIVISMO E EXPERIMENTALISMO NOS ANOS 70 E 80”

Through a diverse collection of documents, ‘RUPTURA EM CENA: Arte, Ativismo e Experimentalismo nos Anos 70 e 80’ [RUPTURE IN SCENE: Art, Activism and Experimentalism in the 1970s and 1980s] situates theatrical production in post-April 25 Porto, reviewing different initiatives that ‘shared the desire to be both artistic projects and social, political and cultural intervention projects’ and that laid the foundations for the professionalisation of theatre.
The opening will be attended by curators Mário Moutinho and Luísa Marinho and moderated by Ana Bigotte Vieira and Carlos Manuel Oliveira. The exhibition is part of the event ‘Vamos Todxs: Histórias do Teatro de Amadores’, organised by the latter two, and to be held at the Sá da Bandeira Theatre in Santarém on 29 March – when the book ‘O Teatro Semiprofissional no Porto. Arte, activismo e experimentalismo nos anos 70 e 80’ [Semi-professional Theatre at Porto. Art, activism and experimentalism in the 70s and 80s], written by the curators in the same context, will also be presented.

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